Kitty Page 23

  ‘This will do very nicely, thank you,’ Kitty said.

  ‘I hope so. The captain said you’ll be staying a few months—would that be right?’

  ‘I think so,’ Kitty replied. ‘As far as we know anyway.’

  Mrs Doyle inclined her head towards Wai, who was bouncing on one of the beds. ‘Until the colleen’s delivered, then?’

  ‘Yes. June, we think,’ Kitty said.

  Kitty could see that Mrs Doyle would have liked to know a bit more about Wai’s predicament and what had brought them here, but to her credit she didn’t ask.

  Instead she said to Wai, ‘There’s plenty of midwives around here when your time comes, dear. I’ll give you a few names if you like.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Wai said with one of her sweetest smiles.

  Mrs Doyle smiled back. ‘Aye, but you’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?’ She turned to Kitty. ‘And so are you. Forgive me for saying so, but I run a respectable business and I don’t expect you to be having male guests here. There’s more than enough bawdy houses in this town, we don’t need another one.’

  To her annoyance Kitty immediately felt guilty. ‘Of course. Er, what about the sanitary arrangements?’

  ‘The bog-house?’ Mrs Doyle said, loudly enough for Rian and Haunui to hear in the other room.

  Kitty nodded.

  ‘In the backyard. You’ll share with the family upstairs, only six of them so it won’t be too bad. There’s a standpipe out there too, so you’ll not have far to go for your water.’

  The yard was tiny, Kitty found when she looked outside, especially given that it was intended to service two households. Surrounded by a high but dilapidated wooden fence, the ground was damp even in this hot weather, and cluttered with all sorts of rubbish—bits of wood, chipped bricks, broken china, food scraps that appeared to have been tossed out of the window upstairs, a dead cat. Among the detritus she also spied a tin bath, a copper and an assortment of articles for laundering. The stink out here was awful—more than just the privy. She climbed onto a crate, peered over the fence and saw why: in the yard next door was an open cesspit, and running parallel to the back fence there appeared to be the premises of a slaughterman. Piles of bones were scattered about and, even more disconcertingly, legs, hooves and heads, and although there were no animals in the yard, the dung everywhere indicated that they had been there very recently. Kitty made a mental note to keep the window of their bedroom firmly closed.

  She went inside again, just in time to hear Haunui announce to Mrs Doyle that he would be living there as well. This was as much of a surprise to Kitty as it was to Wai, but neither minded—they would surely be safe now.

  ‘I don’t take men in these rooms. It’s women only,’ Mrs Doyle said firmly.

  Haunui said with immense dignity, ‘Wai is my niece. It is the custom among my people that whanau be close to a woman when she is…’ Unable to think of the word in English, he gestured at Wai’s belly.

  ‘What’s a far-no when it’s at home?’ Mrs Doyle demanded.

  ‘Whanau means family,’ Kitty explained, although she’d never heard of the protocol to which Haunui had just alluded.

  Mrs Doyle turned to Rian. ‘Is this true, Captain?’

  Rian looked vaguely startled but said, ‘I believe it is, Mrs Doyle. And I can certainly vouch that Wai comes from royal stock, so it’s possibly even more important in this case.’

  Kitty could have kissed him if she hadn’t been so annoyed with him.

  ‘Does she really? Well, I never,’ Mrs Doyle said, although it was clear that she still wasn’t entirely convinced. She leant in close to Rian and whispered loudly, ‘He’s not the father, is he?’

  It was then that Kitty realised that Mrs Doyle was a little deaf.

  ‘No, he is not!’ Wai exclaimed. ‘My uncle has always cared for me. It is proper,’ she added, with deliberate emphasis on the last word.

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Doyle dithered, then seemed to make up her mind. ‘Well, in that case, I suppose it will be all right. No excessive drinking, mind,’ she added, wagging a finger in Haunui’s face. ‘I can see you’ve been in the pub already today. I don’t expect you to carry on like that here, d’you understand? I run a respectable business.’

  ‘Yes, Missus,’ Haunui said meekly.

  ‘And I’ll hold you responsible, Rian Farrell,’ Mrs Doyle added, ‘seeing as you’ve paid the rent for the next four months.’

  Four months? Kitty thought Rian had said one month.

  Rian nodded in agreement, deliberately avoiding Kitty’s eye.

  But Kitty let it go because something had just occurred to her: here, in this town populated by convicts, she was finally free.

  The following morning Kitty awoke to the sound of monotonous lowing from the other side of the fence. Finding herself alone in the house she dressed and took the ewer out to the standpipe for water, but by the time she’d washed, Wai and Haunui had returned, laden with more parcels.

  ‘What’s all this?’ she asked.

  ‘Shopping!’ Wai said brightly. ‘Look!’

  She proceeded to unwrap the parcels until everything was spread out on the table. There were candles and lamp oil, tea, coffee, flour and sugar, a leg of mutton, bread, vegetables, cheese, two pottles of oysters and various jars of pickles, olives and preserves.

  ‘How did you pay for it all?’ Kitty asked, aghast.

  ‘Rian left more money,’ Haunui said.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Kitty exploded. ‘How on earth are we going to pay him back!’

  Haunui beamed, clearly extremely pleased with himself. ‘I got work,’ he said, ‘killing the animals!’

  ‘At the slaughteryard?’

  Haunui nodded. ‘I start tomorrow. Two shillings a day. We will be rich!’

  Two shillings a day wouldn’t go far, Kitty thought, but she hadn’t the heart to say so. She would still have to find work herself.

  She eyed the array of groceries again. ‘Olives? Who eats olives?’

  ‘The jar is pretty,’ Wai said sheepishly.

  They were interrupted then by a shriek of delight from outside, and went out to see what the commotion was.

  Mrs Doyle stood on her doorstep, her arms outstretched towards Mick, who was walking up the lane carrying his shore bag over his shoulder.

  ‘My boy, my baby boy!’ she cried.

  Mick allowed himself to be enfolded in her solid arms and planted a kiss on her whiskery cheek. ‘Hello there, Ma.’

  Mrs Doyle stepped back. ‘You’re looking well, mo ghrá. Been treating you right, has he?’ she said, nodding at Rian who stood some feet behind him.

  ‘Can’t complain,’ Mick said, winking at the girls.

  Rian came forward, shifting his own bag off his shoulder with exaggerated care.

  ‘Thank you for the extra money,’ Kitty said stiffly.

  Rian nodded and moved past her, heading inside. ‘Got something else here for you as well.’

  Kitty and Wai followed in time to see him set the bag gently down on the day bed. Rian undid the strings at the top, and a sleek black head forced its way through the hole, looking in ten different directions at once.

  ‘Bodie!’ Wai exclaimed.

  Soundly slightly embarrassed, Rian explained to Kitty, ‘She was pining. And we’re beaching the Katipo when we’ve unloaded the timber, so she can’t stay on board then anyway. I was hoping you could look after her, now that you’re her best friend. I can’t have her where I’m staying.’

  No, Kitty thought, I bet Enya Mason wouldn’t be at all thrilled with cat fur all over her no doubt immaculate furnishings. But she was pleased all the same—she enjoyed having the cat curled up on her bed at night.

  She nodded. ‘How long will the…beaching take?’

  Rian shrugged. ‘A good few weeks, perhaps longer. The hull’s quite fouled and it’s long overdue, and then she’ll be in dock for repairs and a refit. And I haven’t had word yet on when my next cargo is arriving.’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh. What is it?’

  ‘The cargo? Bits and pieces from America, nothing I expect that would interest you. But we could be ashore for some time.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They looked at each other for a long moment. Kitty couldn’t read Rian’s expression, and she hoped he couldn’t read hers. She was pleased, but not entirely sure why, since she’d already made up her mind about what she did and didn’t want from him. And, anyway, there was Enya Mason now, which changed everything.

  Bodie climbed out of the bag, stretched bone-crackingly, then jumped onto the table and attacked the leg of mutton.

  ‘Oi!’ Rian flicked her across the rump and she leapt into the air, still with her claws jammed into the meat.

  Wai giggled as though it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, but disengaged Bodie’s paws and lifted her off the table. On the floor the cat began to weave her way around Kitty’s legs, letting out small briipps of pleasure.

  Kitty picked her up. ‘Will Mick stay at his mother’s while you’re here?’

  Rian nodded.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask, well, how did Mrs Doyle come to be in Sydney? She isn’t, you know, a convict, is she?’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ Rian said gravely.

  Kitty was shocked; Mrs Doyle didn’t seem like the sort of woman to be convicted of any sort of misdemeanour, let alone transported for it.

  ‘Really? What was she convicted for?’

  ‘Charging astronomical rents.’

  Kitty stared at Rian until, finally, his lips curved in a smile. ‘No, her husband was transported years ago, and she followed him. Three of their kids were born in Ireland and the other five here. Mick’s the youngest.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kitty said. ‘And where will the rest of them stay? The crew, I mean.’

  Wai took the fresh loaf and began slicing it.

  ‘Various pubs and boarding houses,’ Rian replied. ‘Sharkey beds down with some woman, on and off. Pierre has a lady friend as well. Ropata sometimes stays with the Maoris down near the wharf, although he hasn’t lately. Says they’re a rum lot now.’

  ‘Are there a lot of Maoris here?’ Kitty asked, recalling Mrs Goodwin’s comments from the day before.

  Rian nodded. ‘A few. More at certain times than others.’

  ‘Where are they from?’ It seemed very odd to Kitty: no one at Paihia had ever mentioned a colony of Maoris living in Sydney.

  ‘The East Coast, some of them, and the Bay of Plenty. A few from the south.’

  Kitty said, ‘Did you hear that, Wai? You could visit.’

  Wai shrugged, reminding Kitty that to most Maoris people from other tribes might as well be from the moon, the distinctions between them were so marked.

  Kitty pinched a piece of crust. ‘What are they doing here?’

  ‘Most of them come over as crew on the whalers,’ Rian said, ‘or the traders. Some go back home, but others stay, and that’s when they get into trouble.’

  Kitty could see he was about to launch into one of his lectures about the perils of infecting the Maori way of life with the evils of western civilisation. To divert him she set Bodie down on the sofa and asked a question she knew she would regret.

  ‘And where do you stay, Rian?’

  He gave her a strange look. ‘With Enya,’ he said bluntly. ‘I thought you knew that.’

  She turned away because, in her heart, she had.

  ‘I’m going to be looking for work,’ she said over her shoulder as she lifted plates down from the shelf. ‘I thought I’d try this afternoon at St. Patrick’s Inn, where we were yesterday. That looked a reasonably decent sort of place.’

  ‘No,’ Rian said.

  Kitty turned to face him, not even angry at his assumed guardianship of her now, just weary of it. ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can’t work serving grog in a public house, it’s completely unacceptable.’

  ‘So is taking money from someone I barely know. And I can’t pay it back if I don’t get work.’

  Haunui grabbed three very large slices of bread and slunk outside.

  Rian crossed his arms. ‘Well, you’re not working in a pub.’

  ‘I am, if they’ll have me.’

  ‘Oh, with a pretty face like yours the Maguires will have you all right, and so will every man you serve if you’re not careful.’

  Kitty gritted her teeth to stop herself from hurling one of the plates at Rian’s head. Instead she turned her back on him. Why did his words hurt her so much? Why did she let them?

  Rian stood there for a moment longer. ‘Don’t give the cat too much milk,’ he said. ‘She’ll shit everywhere.’

  And then he was gone.

  Kitty checked her appearance in the wall mirror. She’d changed into her cream and red-sprigged dress and new boots, and in her new used bonnet with the cream satin ribbons fastened snugly under her chin she thought she looked really quite presentable.

  Her hair was a different story, though. She’d washed it earlier with the castile and, although it was beautifully clean and soft now, it wouldn’t lie down and looked even shorter. Still, providing she didn’t take her bonnet off, nothing should appear untoward; she would hate Mr and Mrs Maguire to think that she was a convict.

  She left Wai at home in charge of cooking the mutton for supper that night and headed off to St Patrick’s, stopping only at the newsagent’s to post a quick letter to her mother—without a return address—saying she was safe and not to worry.

  However, the nearer she got to the hotel, the more nervous she began to feel: she’d never had a proper job before. It was true that she’d taught at the mission school, and quite successfully too, but that had been more like looking after a large group of nieces and nephews for the morning—fun, slightly exasperating at times and not particularly demanding. The other mission ladies had always insisted that there was much spiritual satisfaction to be had in teaching the children the ways and the words of the Lord, but she hadn’t seen it like that, no matter how much she’d tried. It hadn’t been a real job, though. If she found work in a public house she wouldn’t be able to send the patrons out to find as many different leaves as they could or get them to sing songs all morning if she didn’t feel like serving them.

  But as she neared St Patrick’s, she could hear voices doing just that. She climbed the steps and looked inside. The full tap room was considerably less genteel than the sitting parlour where she and Wai had waited yesterday, but it was still smarter than the Bird-in-Hand.

  She went in and stood just inside the door while her eyes adjusted to the smoky atmosphere. The singers were a large group gathered around several tables, the degree of noise and revelry suggesting that they’d been there for some time. The song, however, was quite sad:

  I’ll take you home again, Kathleen, Across the ocean wild and wide, To where your heart has ever been, Since first you were my bonny bride. The roses all have left your cheek, I’ve watched them fade away and die, Your voice is sad whene’er you speak, And tears bedim your loving eyes. Oh! I will take you back, Kathleen, To where your heart will feel no pain. And when the fields are fresh and green I’ll take you home again.

  Kitty brushed away a tear, thinking about the green fields and meadows of Dereham. This wouldn’t do, and certainly not when she was about to ask for employment. She took a deep breath and made her way across the room to the bar.

  ‘May I speak to Mr Maguire, please?’ she asked the stocky man in shirt-sleeves and a waistcoat wiping the counter with a rag.

  ‘No,’ he said, carrying on polishing.

  ‘Oh,’ Kitty said, deflated. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s at sea, my love. You’ll have to hire yourself a rowboat if you want to talk to him.’

  ‘Is he a sailor?’

  ‘A captain. He’s away a lot.’

  ‘Oh, well, my name is Kitty Carlisle, I was hoping there might be employment here.’

  ‘Were you now?’ the man said, his bushy eyebrows r
aised.

  ‘I’ve only just arrived in Sydney and I’m in need of work.’

  The man looked her up and down—not suggestively, just curiously. ‘You’re on the wrong side of town, then, aren’t you?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We don’t usually see many of your type in here.’

  Kitty touched the back of her neck; could he see how short her hair was? ‘I’m not a convict,’ she said hastily.

  ‘I am,’ the man answered cheerfully. He stuck his hand out across the bar. ‘Ned Hayes, at your service.’

  Kitty shook it gingerly.

  ‘It’s Mrs Maguire you’ll be wanting to talk to. If you give me a second I’ll fetch her for you.’

  He stepped out from behind the bar and disappeared through a door on the other side of the room. Kitty moved over to the wall, where she felt less conspicuous. The Irish men and women were still singing, but more quietly now and in their own tongue; some of them were weeping.

  Mr Hayes returned.

  ‘What’s that on the table?’ Kitty asked, indicating the small white-painted box in the centre of one of the crowded tables.

  ‘Coffin,’ Mr Hayes said, resuming his polishing. ‘It’s a wake.’

  Kitty bit her lip; the box was tiny and could contain the body of only a very young child. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, it’s a tragedy all right,’ Mr Hayes replied. ‘Mrs Maguire says to go up.’

  ‘Er, up where?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘Through that door and up them stairs, first door on the right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kitty said.

  She found Mrs Maguire, as indicated, in the first room at the top of the stairs, bending over a bed smoothing out fresh sheets. St Patrick’s Inn appeared to be a boarding house as well as a hotel.

  Kitty cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, Mr Hayes sent me up.’

  Mrs Maguire straightened slowly, her hand clamped to the small of her back. ‘God blind me,’ she muttered, ‘these beds will be the death of me one day.’ Turning to face Kitty, she said, ‘And you’d be Kitty Carlisle?’

  Kitty nodded. Mrs Maguire seemed to be somewhere in her thirties. She wore no cap and her brown hair was pinned back in a tidy chignon. Her dress was plain but well made, and she wore gold earrings in the shape of leaves, a small gold medal on a chain around her neck, and a gold ring on her wedding finger. Clearly, the hotel trade was fairly lucrative.